Death Kindly Stopped for Him
by JasNutter
Summary: Death has a few choice words for one Sherlock Holmes.


Death, they call me. Lots of titles – dark, sad, inevitable, invincible, evil; take your pick. My favourites happen to be 'beautiful' and 'mystical'. They crack me up.

You'd call me old, but I was spawned not long ago, actually. By who? I dunno that. Who gives. Well anyway, I'm not that old, came to existence just a week after Earth. Earth is old, you say? Well, of course you'd say so. Shut your yapping trap and listen.

What was I talking about? You're so distracting!

Oh yes. Earth.

Earth's been a real sport, you know, through the years. We're pretty tight, if I say so myself. Maybe she's my parent – I've always had my suspicions, but she lets me live here and feed here and lurk around her back to my non-existent heart's content and it's mostly a lot of fun. There were a couple of million years of boredom back then, though, the real carnage party only started once you humans arrived.

You're all so revolting.

Don't give me that look, you know you are.

I don't remember much from your early days, you lot were so agonizingly_ dull _back then, but I've watched you, mingled amongst you and fed on you, lingered around through the turns of tides and you've always been too uppity and too cruel. Not that I'm complaining, you thrown me great feasts. Remember the late 1930s to mid 1940s?

Those were the days.

No, no. You aren't only entertaining because I don't go hungry, if that's what you're thinking. Not at all. It's everything about you puny little primates – your superiority complex, your mindlessness, your unrelenting rejection to acknowledge the abject fact that you're nothing but Life's playthings. Your existence is so insignificant that you feel the need to invent a higher-power in your own image and call it 'God'. I've seen your shaky concept of 'God' morph to guns and money and pointless power over each other. I've watched your blatant, 'barbarian' brutality turn to a deviously and underhandedly executed brutality. You petty little things, you're all the same in your self-righteous evilness.

I don't know if it vexes me or amuses me.

And then there's Sherlock Holmes.

Sometimes, when I'm being particularly angsty and surly and bored, I'll allow that he isn't anything special – just another idiot in a realm constructed by a carnival of idiots. Even today, and I'm particularly sunny today, I'll concede that he_ is_ a real bit of a dumbass.

But then he's also so much more.

I met him first in his late teens, comatose from a drug overdose, beautiful boy – it was such a shame. And then I looked at him and he looked right back at me, and he knew. You know. He knew, the little bugger, he _knew_ I was there for him. You know what he did?

He smirked. He _smirked at me. _He said no and he turned right back. I barely even brushed him.

It was so disconcerting.

He lives hard and fast, and then he is calm and reflective, leaving this pit of stupidity often to an entirely different world world of his own making. Such a paradox. In this sinking ship that happens to be 'humanity' and all that 'humanity' entails, Sherlock Holmes refuses to be safely stowed below. He stays on the deck, clinging to the edge, perched on the outskirts of the chaotic storm, looking into its eyes. He always will be.

And I'll always be there, leaning over him while he starves his body, lost in the palace of his own, and feeding his mind. I am always behind him, gliding closely as he madly dashes through London in careful, measured recklessness. Every prick of needle, every hazardous experiment, every time he flips Life off so insolently, I am there. Constantly.

And he always, _always, _smirks and winks and says no. Not yet. Wait.

The little minx. The little, buggering tease.

He's not different from any other human; his chemical composition is the same. Essentially the same kind of organs, same hormones, same chromosome number, but his mind – oh that mind.

And that heart, so cold and shriveled and stony on the outside; swollen, red and bleeding and throbbing on the inside. Compassion that threatens to consume the whole of him if he doesn't push it down and I find it quite beautiful. If you could see it then you'd understand.

I'm starting to sound like a sap.

He's Life's plaything, like all of you circus monkeys, but he plays Life right back, taunting and teasing me like a naughty lover in the process. He's no soldier, no angel and no warrior; he is no one's knight, but they'll bury him in armor when I finally take him, because the freak and the psychopath will be the hero and the genius then. And I'll show him. I'll show him all of it.

John Watson once said to an empty grave that Sherlock Holmes was the best man he ever knew. I know he won't believe this because I know him and I've touched him – I've seen him. So when he stops saying no and comes with me, pliant and content, I will tell one Sherlock Holmes.

I will tell him just how great he is.

* * *

_Thoughts? _


End file.
